Fighters On The Rise | UFC São Paulo

Through two UFC starts, the younger of the Bonfim brothers looks like the genuine article.

After collecting a contract last September with a first-round submission win over Trey Waters, the 26-year-old has maintained his unbeaten record and finishing ways through both his freshman and sophomore appearances inside the Octagon. It started in January with a 49-second win over Mounir Lazzez, catching the Tunisian in a guillotine choke when he made the grave mistake of leaving his neck exposed. It continued in July at UFC 291, when Trevin Giles made a similar error and suffered the same fate.

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Fifteen up, and 15 down, with every single one of them ending inside the distance has Bonfim positioned on the cusp of cracking the Top 15 in the welterweight division and facing another stern test this weekend in the form of Danish veteran Nicolas Dalby.

We’ve seen this type of matchup a great deal in the last couple weeks — a promising emerging talent paired off with a veteran stalwart — and in the two most prominent examples, the veterans ruled the day. But that’s precisely why Saturday’s pairing with Dalby is crucial to understanding where Bonfim is at in his development, and a must-see contest towards the end of the fight card.

Beating Lazzez and Giles is one thing, but earning a victory over Dalby says something entirely different.

This weekend’s bout is the 30th in his career, and he enters on a three-fight winning streak, having gone 5-1 with one no contest verdict in seven fights since returning to the promotion. The 38-year-old, who celebrates his birthday less than two weeks after this event, is 22-4-1 overall, with two no contests, and has never been finished.

He’s another one of those “truth machines” I’ve been talking a great deal about lately: the kind of guy that will halt your momentum in a hurry if you’re not at your absolute best on fight night, and even if you are, he still might be better.

And that’s why Bonfim is one to pay close attention to on Saturday — because he has the opportunity to earn the biggest victory of his career and make a clear statement about where he stands in the talent-rich 170-pound ranks.

Caio Borralho

The Fighting Nerds team was front and center during the most recent season of Dana White’s Contender Series, with several members of the Brazilian crew turning in impressive performances and leaving Las Vegas with a UFC contract in hand.

Saturday, the first member of the outfit to graduate to the Octagon makes his second appearance of the year, aiming to continue his unbeaten run under the UFC banner and extend his overall winning streak to an even dozen.

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Borralho is 4-0 in the UFC and coming off his most impressive outing to date, a second-round submission win over Michael Oleksiejczuk in April where he played to his advantages in the grappling department and dominated the fight from start to finish. Unbeaten since losing the second fight of his career more than eight years ago, the 30-year-old Borralho is another ascending talent that has thus far passed every test with flying colors, and whose ceiling cannot be defined as of yet.

Is he a Top 15 fighter? A potential contender? Someone that could emerge as middleweight champion in the future?

No one can say with any certainty whether he will or won’t accomplish any of those things; all we know for sure is that he’s looked great thus far and this next opportunity on Saturday is another important one.

Abus Magomedov stepped up to face Borralho after this original opponent, Nursulton Ruziboev, was forced to withdraw for undisclosed reasons. The German veteran won his debut in 19 seconds, and then tired quickly before being finished in the second round of a main event contest with Sean Strickland at the start of July; Strickland, of course, has since gone on to claim the middleweight title.

This pairing with Magomedov is for Borralho what Bonfim’s matchup with Dalby is: a date with an experienced foe that should, in theory, provide the streaking ascending fighter with more of a challenge than his previous opponents have been able to put forth. Whether or not that comes to pass will be determined inside the Octagon.

Middleweight has undergone some changes in the last several months and remains in the spotlight right now after both Khamzat Chimaev and Ikram Aliskerov picked up quality wins two weeks back at UFC 294. This is Borralho’s chance to show that he’s someone that could eventually rise to be mentioned in the same space as those two ascending contenders, and it’ll be interesting to see how he navigates this matchup, given that the current champion was the last man to share the Octagon with Magomedov.

Rinat Fakhretdinov

While Bonfim and Borralho are working their way towards earning a place in the Top 15, Fakhretdinov has already done so, creeping into the rankings on the strength of three straight UFC victories, a 21-1 record, and 20 consecutive victories overall.

The 32-year-old “Gladiator” earned a first-round knockout win over former UFC competitor Eric Spicely in his final bout outside the Octagon before leaning on his grappling to post back-to-back unanimous decision victories over Andreas Michailidis and Bryan Battle in his first two sojourns into the UFC cage.

But it was his most recent effort that really thrust him into the spotlight and put him on the larger radar as someone to watch in the welterweight division.

Paired off with Kevin Lee on the first of July in Las Vegas, Fakhretdinov dropped the returning former lightweight contender with a clean right hand 35 seconds into the fight, clamping onto a modified guillotine choke as Lee looked to work to his feet. “The Motown Phenom” went to sleep and Fakhretdinov went and got his hand raised in the center of the Octagon again.

This weekend, the streaking Russian talent faces veteran Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos in a captivating pairing.

The 36-year-old Brazilian enters on a two-fight winning streak and sporting a 10-3 record overall inside the Octagon, with two of those three setbacks coming by split decision, the first against Dalby. A 31-fight veteran with sharp striking and a deep gas tank, dos Santos will undoubtedly be buoyed by fighting in his home nation for the first time in more than three years and bolstered by the fact that he’s 3-0 in the UFC when competing in Brazil.

As much as Lee is a bigger name than dos Santos, this would be a bigger victory for Fakhretdinov, which is why he’s highlighted here. Lee failed to earn a victory in three UFC starts at welterweight, and though he had plenty of success at 155 pounds, he was just 3-5 in his eight fights prior to their July engagement.

But dos Santos has a track record of being successful in this space, having won seven straight between his debut loss to Dalby and his August 2019 defeat at the hands of Li Jingliang, and while he’s currently stationed outside of the rankings, everyone that pays attention to the sport on more than a surface level knows how tough he is and how meaningful a victory over him would be for the ascending Russian.

Having already cracked the Top 15, posting a fourth straight victory on Saturday would likely position Fakhretdinov for a date with someone else with a number next to their name next time out, and given how impressive he’s looked thus far, it’s not difficult to envision him continuing to string together wins and climb even higher in the rankings in 2024.